Popular perception of what science is

[aggle-rithm]

I'm often disheartened at yet another piece of evidence that most people in our society don't have a clue what science actually is, although they don't hesitate to reap the benefits of what it has discovered. I had another one of those moments last night while watching "The Middle", one of my favorite sitcoms. Sure, it's just a sitcom, and I shouldn't take it seriously. It still made me a little ill.

In the episode, the daughter Sue was in a science class taught by a grumpy curmudgeon who was fed up with "kids today". He assigned the class a project whereby each student was to come up with a hypothesis and test it.

Sue actually came up with a pretty good one: "Smiles are contagious." It's simple and fairly easy to test, although the controls that would be required aren't immediately obvious. However, when she told the teacher what she had chosen, he criticized her choice, saying she was unlikely to win the Nobel Prize for that. At the same time, he praised other students for having more sciency-sounding ideas.

The rest of the episode showed her testing the hypothesis on various people, and finding that, in fact, smiling is not contagious. It was a pretty awfully designed test, but this is a high school student who has received zero guidance from her teacher, so I suppose it's understandable.

In the end, she turned in her paper showing her findings. The show portrayed the teacher reading it silently with a voice-over of Sue saying that, although she hadn't been able to prove her hypothesis, she was never going to rest until she proved that smiling was contagious, because the world needs smiles, and science doesn't explain everything, and other maudlin crap. The paper was so moving that it melted the teacher's icy heart, and he smiled warmly as he read it.

All I could think of was: WHAT A CRAPPY SCIENCE TEACHER. He had totally failed to teach her what science was about. The purpose of an experiment is not to prove your hypothesis right, it's to determine whether it is right or wrong. The idea that negative results should only push you to keep searching for something that clearly isn't there is why there is so much money wasted on woo, trying in vain to find some miniscule effect of ESP or ghosts or what have you.

Anyway, now I'm bummed out. We live in a society of morons. My favorite show has been tainted by wooish writing. My plantar fascitis is acting up.

Can anyone cheer me up?

 

[joesixpack]

This is why I won't watch television (and why I'm not allowed to watch with others). I become so critical of the story's premise or moral that I feel compelled to insert a running commentary that generally concludes with the words "hell in a hand basket".

A friend of mine had once said "The world wants you to be stupid" and I have to agree. Certainly advertisers and politicians benefit from a total lack of critical thinking skills. Keeping viewers in a state where the only engagement with the program is emotional makes one more susceptible to both advertising messages and political demagoguery. Thinking takes a holiday, and I have grown to believe that there is a general push to make this so. I'm not certain that it is an active conspiracy but there is a definite feedback loop that would encourage this trend.

Add to this that there is an actual effort in some circles to destroy science and create doubts as to it's effectiveness.

So yeah, we're going to hell in a hand basket.

 

[Hellbound]

Can anyone cheer me up?

The existance of a flamethrower means that somewhere, someone said to themselves "I'd really like to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done!"

So yeah, we're going to hell in a hand basket.

Hey, hell has nothing to do with this one. The quickest route to hell involves actually starting to think.

Besides, the handbaskets are comfy!

 

[Dinwar]

To be fair, a LOT of scientists fall into exactly this trap. Just check into the plate tectonics arguments to see ample evidence of this (I'm avoiding Creationism because I want to emphasize that these were legitimate scientists committing the same error as the kid, essentially).

The science teacher should be shot. First and foremost, if your only interest in science is a Nobel Prize you're not going to produce good science. The best advice I've ever gotten in regards to science was "Go to your lab and do your work. Do it well." Famous people get press, but they're only possible because hoards of the rest of us are quietly toiling away behind them, providing them with the data necessary for their speculations. To be fair, most researchers fully acknowledge the debt they owe to the unsung scientists; but the notion that only Nobel-worth research is worth doing is insidious and deadly to science. I mean, for one thing some of the most practical fields simply cannot get Nobel prizes (ever hear of a Nobel prize for geology?).

I also find it curious that she found smiles to not be contageous. Generally, people smiling tend to be in good moods, which tend to be transmitable.

I become so critical of the story's premise or moral that I feel compelled to insert a running commentary that generally concludes with the words "hell in a hand basket".

There's a rule in the house where I grew up that I'm not allowed to watch The Day After Tomorrow. They threatened to throw me out because of my commentary. And they only reason they allow me to watch The Core is because they think it's funny to watch my sister and me debate the literary merits of the show (the science is so stupid that it's not worth commenting on).

 

[Akri]

I also find it curious that she found smiles to not be contageous. Generally, people smiling tend to be in good moods, which tend to be transmitable.

I don't know about smiles being contagious, but according to an article Cracked put up today smiles have something like a 10% chance of making people more charitable.

But I imagine the reason her findings showed otherwise was because they thought it would make a better plot to have her steadfastly refuse to give up her belief in the face of evidence.

 

[r-j]

The worst thing about the show mentioned, is that smiling actually is contagious.

http://scienceblog.com/176/a-smile-really-is-contagious/

 

[geni]

All I could think of was: WHAT A CRAPPY SCIENCE TEACHER. He had totally failed to teach her what science was about. The purpose of an experiment is not to prove your hypothesis right, it's to determine whether it is right or wrong.

This version of what science is has been considered inaccurate for a least 50 years. Why do you insist on spreading falsehoods? To take classic example there's a fairly standard hypothesis as to the molecular shape of water (basicaly "V" shaped). However if you take raman spectrograph water it seems to indicate that water is linear. Do you therefore reject V shaped water? (in practice the issue is that two of the peaks in the raman spectrograph are basicaly on top of each other)

The idea that negative results should only push you to keep searching for something that clearly isn't there is why there is so much money wasted on woo, trying in vain to find some miniscule effect of ESP or ghosts or what have you.

The amount of money spent on actually researching such things is really fairly insignificant.

In a more general sense giving up in the face of a single negative result is uncommon unless it makes it impossible to get further funding or the negative result reaches the standard of "impossible with regards to the most accepted laws of physics".

 

[Orphia Nay]

Hey, at least the show mentioned science!

Mostly it seems that the public perception of science is that it's boring.

 

[joesixpack]

Hey, at least the show mentioned science!

Mostly it seems that the public perception of science is that it's boring.

The way it's generally taught in school would give little reason to suspect otherwise, sadly. I don't mean to bash science teachers, I think it's a subject that would be hard to teach considering that the bulk of time a child spends in school is spent trying to force them to accept facts without question, and real science would run completely counter to that.

 

[aggle-rithm]

The existance of a flamethrower means that somewhere, someone said to themselves "I'd really like to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done!"

This reminds me of when I did tech support at a call center, and people complained about having their calls routed ALL THE WAY to Texas, as if they were expected to walk that distance.

I kept my mouth shut, but I wanted to say, "How do you think I feel? You're too far away for me to punch you in the face."

But thank you, that does cheer me up.

 

[Hellbound]

This reminds me of when I did tech support at a call center, and people complained about having their calls routed ALL THE WAY to Texas, as if they were expected to walk that distance.

I kept my mouth shut, but I wanted to say, "How do you think I feel? You're too far away for me to punch you in the face."

But thank you, that does cheer me up.

I aim to please .

However, I have to admit that I shamelessly stole that joke from here